


Stalemate

by sweetmyungsoo



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chess, Competition, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 23:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6304408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetmyungsoo/pseuds/sweetmyungsoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were forever in a stalemate. A story about two chess players. Also known as, the chess AU that nobody asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stalemate

**Author's Note:**

> only the tiniest bit inspired by my irl chess friend's rants about her competitions and there's a small x-men reference if you squint!

**The Warm Up**

Annabeth paces around the length of whatever room she’s holed up in. She rereads every chess manual she’s ever been given, tries to over-anticipate what she’s already anticipated about her opponent. She unbraids her plaits, then re-braids them again. She is…nervous.

She wonders what her opponent is doing to prepare.

…

Percy sits in his room, eyes about 4 inches from the screen of his phone, playing Angry Birds. Most others would think he’s playing it cool, but no one else really notices the shaking of his hands or the increasingly frantic taps of his fingers.

He wonders what sushi tastes like underwater. Maybe he should try it sometime after this match.

* * *

 

 

**The Eyes**

For Percy, it’s all in the eyes. Every game of his is predetermined by the eyes of his opponent. It’s not the second-to-last move before checkmate; it’s not how fast his opponent hits that timer; it’s his eyes.

The eyes determined how confident the opponent, and their skill level. Anyone could _say_ they were good or bad, but their eyes always betrayed the truth. Confidence meant either stupidity or arrogance; insecurity meant second doubts. Percy twisted both to his advantage in a classic Kubrick Stare, asserting his win before the match even began.

Percy never ever stared too long, but there was something in this girl’s eyes as they sat down and nodded at each other. Blue-grey with a certain spark of life to them, like a lone lighthouse on a stormy coastal cliff.

A fierce look as she stared and didn’t look away. He was a little intimidated.

…

Annabeth never wore make-up, but her mother had insisted she try some now that her birthday had passed some two weeks ago. And so she twisted open the cap of Covergirl, stabbed herself in the eye twice, and supposedly looked more glamorous than before.

Her opponent certainly seemed to think so, a dimwit who didn’t know when to take a hint and stop staring. She glared at him, all the while wishing she had telepathy so she could explain how everything was her mom’s fault.

* * *

 

**The Timer**

Seconds tick by. Annabeth’s eyebrows are furrowed, her forehead creased as she tries to anticipate his next move. He grins at her kind of wolfishly, hand slamming down on the timer nearly as fast as he moves the chess pieces. She glares at him.

She glares at the clock. She glares at the board. She glares at her life. But inside her head, there is a constant ticking, festering in the cracks of her foundation, the carefully planned and practiced moves to victory. She hesitates but presses the timer, buying herself time.

…

Percy makes the time work for him; he has it stretch into an impossibly long length that can never manage to compete with the ferocious capacity of his brain. Each moment is deliberate, with start and end and everything in between measured carefully.

The falter in the movement of a single bishop by his lovely opponent tells him her next three moves. Or so he likes to think.

* * *

 

**The Audience**

People don’t mean to be noisy; it just happens. The soft rustle of papers, the creak of a loose floorboard, an impossible ringing in Percy’s ears, it’s like they all stick those tweezers from Operation straight into his brain and mess with it, disrupting the nearly seamless stream of his consciousness.

He’s too aware of what’s going around him and even worse, Percy cares about what they think. That’s his curse: he gives a damn when no one else does.

…

Annabeth’s thoughts are quiet and gentle, like the brush of a feather. Everyone else shouts around her, but she just retreats inward further to find the solution that she already knew. She can’t always tune them out, though.

The people that hover around have gifted her with their unattainable expectations and prejudices and preconceived notions. They needn’t say a single word but are slowly crumbling her composure. Annabeth’s seemingly used to this, but then again her opponent is doing that himself. Whatever he’s thinking shouldn’t bother her but it feels like they’re breathing down her neck.

* * *

 

**The Endgame**

In the end, it didn’t really matter. They were two evenly matched players with strengths where the other was weak and weaknesses where the other was strong. Two different and same people. With two different pasts and radically different futures but for this one moment, together in the same place. Their threads had temporarily intertwined and it was up to both of them to decide how impacted by this they would become.

Perhaps it had been minutes or hours, but then Annabeth looked up and so did Percy. And then they both tipped down their kings, forsaking their kingdoms for a temporary bought freedom.

Gasps bounced off the walls of the small room. Cameras flashed and reporters sought to make an even bigger spectacle of the already boring chess match. Two of the youngest players to enter an international competition forfeit, or some stupid shit like that. Percy and Annabeth shook hands and left the room, going their separate ways.

They met again on the way to their respective warm-up rooms. Annabeth blinked, “Do you want to catch a movie or something?”

Percy smirked, “Maybe,” and gave her his phone number. And they parted as equals, humbled by the experience and ready to become better, as should be the true end of a chess match.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
